


you've got blood on your hands, and I know it's mine (I just need more time)

by camwolfe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:29:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6299233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camwolfe/pseuds/camwolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The woman asked him for help finding her missing child, so of course Steve's going to help her. He's doing it alone, though, just like everything he does now. He should probably tell someone where he's going, but no one is going to want to come with him anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> W E L C O M E to another WIP but this one is almost finished, I promise (picture me dancing away slowly from your raised eyebrows and pointed gestures at my other unfinished shit)
> 
> Warnings for child death in this chapter (not graphic, like you don't see it happen but it's there and mentioned), and then everything already mentioned in the tags. Let me know if there's something else I should tag for, like always.
> 
> OH ALSO, title is from a song called "Unfinished Business." It's originally by... White Lies (I just googled that), but the Mumford and Sons version is more popular.

He’s got to get groceries at some point. 

He’s ordered food every night this week, but it’s getting to the point where the delivery guys look at him with pity every time they bring him his food. He hasn’t had any real reason to leave his apartment all week, so he just… hasn’t. 

His fridge is empty now, though, and so are the cupboards. He briefly considers just not eating, but rationality kicks in soon after that. He has to eat, this is ridiculous. He can go to the damn grocery store. 

Steve showers for the first time in days and rummages through his laundry hamper until he finds clothes that are relatively clean. He grabs his wallet and heads out, barely remembering to lock the door behind him. It’s not like he has anything of real value to steal anyway. 

He heads outside, blinking in the bright winter sunlight. He starts to make his way down the block, his hands shoved in his pockets against the chill. 

“Excuse me!” someone calls from behind him. 

Steve turns around. A woman is hurrying towards him. 

She’s young, probably in her early thirties. She isn’t wearing makeup, and stress is etched into the lines of her face. 

“Excuse me, I’m sorry,” she pants, rushing up to him. “I know this must be strange.” 

“Sorry, do I know you?” Steve asks, even though he knows he doesn’t. She’s probably a Hydra operative, and she’s probably going to shoot him in a second. Whatever. 

“No, no, I - “ the woman says. “I’m, my name is Amber Legler, and I need your help.”

Steve hesitates. “I…” 

“Please just hear me out,” Amber begs. “My daughter is missing, she’s been gone for three weeks. Her name is Amelia, we call her Amy - “ 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again. “I’m sure the police are doing everything they can - “ 

“They aren’t!” Amber shouts. She’s on the verge of tears. “That’s why I need you, the police aren’t doing anything. They’re scared, they’re fucking cowards.” 

Steve frowns. “What? Why?” 

“It’s Hydra,” Amber says, and starts to cry. “My husband, he, he used to work for them, years and years ago. I know it’s them. They took her three weeks ago and I called the police right away, and now they won’t even talk to me. They don’t want to mess with them.” 

Steve sighs, and rubs a hand over his face. “Look, I… I want to help you, I do, I just don’t know what I can do.” 

Amber wipes at her tears and folds her arms again, her jaw set. “I don’t know, I don’t know either. I’m just desperate, I’m… it’s been three weeks.” 

Steve sighs and gives in. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do, alright? I can’t… I can’t promise anything.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Amber whispers. She pulls a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and holds it out, her hands trembling. “This is the flyer, it has her information on it and my phone number and my email - “ 

“Okay,” Steve says. He takes it and tucks it into his pocket. “I’ll call you if I find out anything, alright?” 

Amber nearly starts crying again. 

“Thank you,” she says desperately. “Thank you so much. I don’t have much money but I’ll pay whatever you want - “ 

“What?” Steve asks, staring at her. “No, no, I don’t, that’s okay - “ 

Several tearful handshakes later, Steve is finally free. He makes it to the grocery store without further incident. 

He fills his basket up with microwave meals and cereal. He grabs a bottle of orange juice and figures that’s enough to meet his health food needs. He’s tired. 

Steve pays for his food and heads back home. A group of children on their way back from school run past him, laughing and shouting at one another. He watches them go. He doesn’t feel anything. 

Steve breathes a sigh of relief when he gets back inside and can lock the door behind him. He shoves the food unceremoniously into the fridge, still in the bags, and then collapses back on the couch. He’ll eat later. He’s too tired to do it right now. 

He turns the television on and falls asleep again, listening to a frighteningly cheerful woman telling him why he should purchase a two-hundred dollar blender. 

 

His dreams aren’t quite nightmares, but they aren’t pleasant either. They all start the same way, with him and Bucky going about their daily lives together. Nothing horrific happens in the dreams. Steve just turns around and Bucky’s gone, and then he’s alone again. 

He wakes up, and it’s just the same as his dreams. There’s not really any point in being awake, he thinks, but there’s no real reason to be asleep either. 

Steve hauls himself off the couch and makes himself eat one of his microwave meals. It’s not particularly delicious, but his hands stop shaking and the dizziness recedes. He needs to set an alarm or something to remind himself to eat, like Sam suggested. Bucky used to just make a bunch of different meals a day, and Steve would eat those. He forgets, now that it’s just him here. 

He finds his phone and calls Sharon. She picks up, even though it’s after midnight. 

He gives her the missing girl’s information and explains the situation. Sharon puts him on hold while she goes to look into it, and Steve slumps down on the couch again. 

Time was, he’d just call up Tony or Nat or whoever else was available and hop on the jet. They’d track down the girl, save her, and be home in time for dinner. 

It’s just him, now. 

Steve stares at the screen. The same woman is now gesturing wildly, apparently overwhelmed by the near-magical properties of the very expensive dish towel she’s holding. 

Sharon picks up the phone again a few minutes later and gives him the name of a national park up in Canada where she thinks the girl has probably been taken. 

“It’s Hydra,” she says, disgust evident in her voice. “The mom’s right, her local police have unofficially closed the case. There’s no movement on this at all.” 

Steve sighs. “Okay, thanks. I’ll probably head up there and take a look.” 

“You’re going by yourself?” Sharon asks. “That’s a shitty idea, Steve. Call Wilson.” 

“He’s busy.” 

“You know he’ll go with you if you ask,” Sharon says impatiently. 

“I don’t want to bother him.” 

Sharon sighs. They’ve had this argument before. “Can you call Barnes - “

“Sharon,” Steve says. “I’m gonna go now. Thanks for your help.” 

“Steve - “ she tries, and Steve hangs up. He immediately feels bad about it, and quickly goes online and orders one of those edible basket things to be sent to her office. She loves that stuff. 

He starts packing, which mainly consists of throwing a few changes of clothes into a backpack and grabbing some gloves and a hat from the back of his closet. 

He books a plane ticket from his laptop and heads to the airport. 

 

It’s not hard to find Hydra. It rarely is. 

He rents a car and drives into the national park. It doesn’t take him long to find a deserted access road with a large gate blocking it, declaring it “closed for the season.” 

Maybe it is genuinely closed because of the snow, maybe it isn’t. Steve doubts it, though, because he spent the flight scrutinizing a map of the park and this road wasn’t on it. There also aren’t any buildings or towns in this area according to the map, but several hours into his hike he sees several low concrete buildings nestled into the trees. 

The weather is turning. It had been cold but sunny when he got here, and now it’s clouded over. The wind is starting to howl, and the chill in the air has started to bite at his face. 

His jacket is warm and so are his boots, but he really isn’t dressed for this weather. He has no face protection, no baselayers, and his gloves are too thin to keep the cold out. Hell, he’s wearing jeans. 

Whatever. 

Steve knows there’s something wrong the moment he gets close enough to the buildings to see them. It’s deserted. The doors on the buildings are firmly shut and the few windows that he can see are shuttered and dark. There’s no one around. No perimeter, no movement in the courtyards. Nothing. 

He keeps going. He crouches down and waits for a minute, just in case it’s a trap or something. Then he decides that he doesn’t really care if it is or not, and gets up again. 

Nobody shoots him as he walks towards the buildings, or jumps out from behind corners to attack him. It’s quiet, other than the sound of the wind howling through the trees around him. 

Steve breaks through one of the doors by cracking his shield against the lock. It’s almost a relief to step inside, away from the biting wind. 

He pulls the broken door shut behind him and blinks rapidly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. 

The building is silent. Emergency generator lights are spaced periodically throughout the hallway, and it’s enough for Steve to see by. 

He starts making his way from room to room, and his heart sinks a little more with each one. Each one is empty, deserted. Computer labs, kitchens, research stations. All of it abandoned.

He has to stop and grit his teeth when he reaches the room he’s been looking for. He know it’s the one before he even steps inside. 

He can smell it. 

 

It’s just as bad as he knew it was going to be.

 Steve makes his way through the room filled with operating tables, failed experiments still lying on top of each one. 

God, he doesn’t know how Bucky and Nat are doing this. How they can see this shit every day and just keep going. Well, he does know. They’re stronger than him, that’s how. 

He makes himself look at the face of each person until he finds her. 

She looks just like she does in the picture on her flyer, and her hair is the same colour as her mom’s. 

Steve turns around and stumbles back through the building. He shoulders open the door and falls to his knees in the snow outside, his lungs struggling to get enough air.

He’s so fucking useless. Everyone else is out there, still fighting, still living in the damn world, and here he is. Too late to save a little girl who didn’t do anything wrong, who probably died terrified and alone and in agony. She died in pain while Steve was sitting on the couch watching infomercials and eating cereal. 

He’s such a damn coward. 

Steve wraps his arms around his stomach and leans forward until his face is almost touching the snow. He’s cold, it’s really fucking cold, and he doesn’t fucking care. He might as well just stay here. It’s not like he’s doing any good back home. 

It’s not like there’s anyone waiting for him there. 

 

He does get up, after a while. Not out of any real desire to get to safety, but because when the wind shifts he can smell the distinctive scent of death coming from the building. 

Steve starts walking back the way he came. Or, at least he tries to. The blowing snow and ice has covered his footprints by now, and it’s obscuring any landmarks that he might have recognized. 

He keeps walking anyway. There’s no particular place he has to be.

He doesn’t realize he’s walking on a snow-covered lake until it’s too late. He feels the snow give way under his foot, and he barely has time to toss his shield clear before he’s underwater. 

It’s agonizing. The cold goes through his clothes and his skin and curls around his bones. He managed to suck in a breath before his head went under, but the chill forces that precious air from his lungs. 

He hates this, he _hates_ it, and so when his foot brushes the bottom of the lake he kicks against it with everything he has. His heavy jacket and boots are weighing him down, but the lake isn’t that deep and his head breaks the surface again. 

He has to break the ice in front of him to get back to shore. By the time he makes it back to dry land and grabs his shield, he’s so cold that he can barely move. 

His once-cozy jacket is now dead weight. He gives up on trying to get the zipper down and just rips it off. There’s relief for a few moments until the cold air starts to bite at his damp skin and shirt. 

Steve crawls forward and then gets to his feet again. He’s so miserable that he can’t even stand it. He has to do something, anything, so he starts walking.

It doesn’t help. The trees aren’t thick enough to protect him from the wind, and the icy water has stopped his body from being able to warm up again. A normal person would probably be dead by now, but not Steve. No, he’s still stuck here, trudging blindly through a blizzard with only a hunk of metal for company. 

He sits down, at some point. He doesn’t mean to. One moment he’s walking, and the next he’s sitting with his back against a tree. 

He isn’t really cold anymore, which is nice. He tries to breathe a sigh of relief, but his chest is so tight. 

He’s tired. It’s okay. 

At least he isn’t cold. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aww thanks for the comments guys! I love u

Something’s tugging at him. 

 

He’s moving. He’s being... carried? 

There’s talking, but it’s not in a language he can understand. He doesn’t bother trying to wake up. 

 

He does, however, wake up when someone starts slapping his face. 

Steve groans and tries to wiggle away, but his back hits something. His limbs feel slow and heavy, and his eyes are gritty. 

He forces them open anyway. His vision is blurry, and he blinks sleepily, trying to clear it. 

He doesn’t feel well. He can feel his body shaking, but as if from a distance. There’s a bone deep ache running through his limbs, but nothing much other than that. 

Something tugs at his feet, and Steve kicks reflexively. 

“Ow,” Bucky says, and Steve yelps. 

They’re in the back of an SUV type thing with the seats folded down to make an almost flat surface. The world outside the windows is bright white, the snow obscuring everything. 

“What are you doing?” Steve tries to say, but his jaw won’t open properly and it comes out a garbled mess. 

Bucky glances at him, but then goes back to tugging Steve’s boots off. Steve doesn’t feel anything as Bucky gets them off. 

“The hell were you thinking,” Bucky mutters. He reaches for Steve’s belt, and Steve makes a noise of protest and tries to wiggle away. 

Bucky gives him an exasperated look and bats Steve’s useless hands away. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before, Rogers.” 

Steve glares at him, but he knows it isn’t very effective considering several of his eyelashes are still frozen together. 

Bucky tugs Steve’s jeans and boxers off. He wraps him up immediately in another emergency blanket. There’s already one around his shoulders and torso. 

Steve’s shivering gets worse, and then he starts to get some feeling back in his arms and legs. 

He grits his teeth and tries not to whimper, but it hurts. It hurts like nothing else. His skin is starting to thaw, the burned and frozen tissue struggling to come back to life. 

Bucky sighs and twists around in the small space. He leans back against the corner of the SUV and tucks Steve into his arms. 

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky says, but he’s running his hand up and down Steve’s arm as he says it. It feels  _so_ _good_. Steve hasn’t touched anyone since Bucky left. He missed it, he missed Bucky so much that now he wants to cry. Maybe he can pretend it’s just the pain. 

“What - what are you - you doing here?” Steve manages to say after a few more minutes. His teeth are chattering, and he has to force the words out through his clenched jaw. 

“Sharon called us,” Bucky says. He stops rubbing Steve’s arms and starts pulling gently at his hands instead, trying to get Steve to unclench his fingers. “She told us what you were doing. Said that you were doing it  _by yourself_.” 

Steve tries to shrug, but it gets mixed in with his shivering. 

“What happened to sharing body heat?” he says, trying to change the subject. 

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, that doesn’t work if both people are hypothermic.” 

Steve twists around in Bucky’s grasp, trying to get a better look at his face. Sure enough, Bucky’s face is pale underneath his thick hat. He must have had a neckwarmer over most of his face, but the skin just below his eyes is already white with frostbite. 

Steve immediately starts trying to shed his bundle of emergency blankets. “Here, you take - “ 

“Steve,” Bucky says, locking his arms around Steve again. “Don’t even try.” 

“But - “ 

“Steve.” 

Steve sighs and stops trying to wiggle free. He’s still cold as hell, honestly, and his skin feels like it’s burning. 

It’s quiet, other than the sound of Steve’s teeth chattering. The wind howls outside and throws snowflakes against the window, but other than that, it’s silent. 

“Our car’s fucked,” Bucky says after another few minutes. “Nat’s walking back into town to get another one, but we couldn’t exactly drag you all the way there. She’s gonna come back for us.” 

“’Kay,” Steve mumbles. That’s fine. He’s fine right here.

“You gonna tell me why you walked out into one of the worst storms I’ve ever seen and just sat down?” 

“I didn’t mean to,” Steve says petulantly, his face pressed into Bucky’s jacket. 

“Why didn’t you wait until the storm stopped? Or not go at all? Or just call us?” 

Steve shrugs again. He doesn’t have an answer. 

Well, he does, but it’s not one that Bucky’s gonna want to hear. 

He doesn’t want Bucky to be mad anymore. He just wants him to keep doing what he’s doing, which is keeping one arm wrapped securely around Steve’s shoulders and the other still working on his frozen hands. 

He falls asleep, at some point. He’s still cold and stiff and achy, but he can hear Bucky’s heartbeat and feel his chest rising and falling and it’s just so _calming_. 

Natasha must come back at some point, because he wakes up to the sensation of Bucky hauling him out of the truck and into another one. 

He tries not to whimper when the cold hits his face again, because, well, that’s pathetic, but it happens anyway. Bucky quickly bundles him into the backseat of the other car. The heat is on full blast inside, and Steve nearly groans with relief as he gets his hands over one of the vents. 

He still feels tired and sick and awful, and he lets himself fall asleep again as the car starts. He hears Natasha talking to him, but he’s too tired to respond. 

He wakes up a few more times on the drive back to civilization. Bucky and Natasha are talking in quiet voices, but they aren’t speaking English and Steve doesn’t bother trying to figure out what they’re saying. They’re talking about him, though. He can tell by the way that Bucky keeps gesturing at him. 

Bucky has to get out a few times and dig them out of a snowdrift, but eventually the road smooths out and turns into pavement. He’s finally starting to warm up a little, and yet he still feels chilled to the core. 

They must stop at a hotel, because Bucky crawls into the backseat and shoves Steve into a new pair of sweatpants and a shirt. He wants to snap at Bucky that he can do it himself, but, well. He can’t. He’s really, really fucking cold. 

Bucky drags him into the hotel and through the hallways, finally opening one of the doors and hauling him inside. He sits Steve down on one of the beds and steps back. He looks uncertain. 

“Okay,” he says finally. “The room’s paid for and everything, so don’t worry about that. I booked you a taxi to the airport tomorrow, too, just ask the clerk for it.”

Steve stares dully at him. His hands hurt. 

“We really gotta get going,” Bucky continues. “Otherwise I’d stay. You’re okay?” 

“Yeah,” Steve says. What else is he going to say?

“Good,” Bucky says. “Okay. Uh, I’ll call you in a few days, alright? Check in?” 

“Sure.” 

“Okay,” Bucky says uncertainly. “Take a hot shower or something. You look like shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

Bucky sighs. “Okay. I’m gonna go.” 

“Bye,” Steve mumbles. His body hurts. 

He looks down at his mangled hands. He hears Bucky hesitate, and then head for the door. 

Steve waits until it shuts behind him and his footsteps fade before slumping over onto the bedspread. He curls up, tucking his aching hands against his chest and pressing his face into the blanket. 

Time passes. He watches the little red numbers on the alarm clock tick away. 

He holds his hand in front of his face for a while and watches the skin start to heal and regrow. 

He tucks it into his chest again as the pain grows and ebbs. 

He's so tired. 

 

Steve's still awake when he hears the sound of the door unlocking. He hasn't moved. 

He forces his eyes open, just in time to see Bucky come back into the room.

Bucky sighs when he sees Steve.

"I knew it," he mutters. He looks unhappy.

"What are you doing?" Steve asks. Well, he mumbles it into the blankets. Bucky ignores him.

"Alright," Bucky says. "Time to get up."

He comes over to the bed and wraps his hands under Steve's shoulders, hauling him upright. Steve bites his tongue as his stiff muscles protest.

Bucky drags him into the washroom and props Steve up against the wall. He leans over and starts the shower, swearing under his breath as he tries to get the water to fill up the tub instead of coming out of the showerhead.

 Steve's legs and joints are still aching, and he watches with a detached mild interest as they give out. He starts sliding down to the floor, his back to the wall. 

"Fuck," Bucky mutters again, and scrambles back over to grab Steve before he hits the ground.

He gets Steve settled on the floor, and then goes back to wrestling with the shower. He finally gets the bathtub to start filling up and then leans back over to Steve. 

"You gotta help me out here," Bucky says as he tries to tug Steve's sweater over his head. Steve tries his best, but Bucky's muttering under his breath again by the time he gets him undressed.

Bucky practically dumps Steve into the bathtub. Admittedly, he'd probably tried to lower him gently, but Steve is too tired to help out much. 

"Okay," Bucky says, once Steve is settled. "You just... stay here for a while, alright? I'm gonna go get some food or something." 

Steve nodded. He stares at the ugly flower pattern lining the shower wall. 

"Steve. Steve!" 

Steve blinks and groggily turns to look at Bucky. 

"If the water cools off before I get back, you need to heat it up again, alright?" 

Steve nods. Bucky sighs and gets up. 

Steve hears the door shut behind him again. He sinks lower into the water and stares at the flower pattern again. Maybe at one point it had been a bright flower on a nice white background, but now the flower is faded and discoloured. The tiles are yellowed and cracked. 

The water is working. Steve can feel his muscles starting to relax, the tension starting to seep from his bones. 

The cold is still there, though. He's still shivering. 

 

The water starts to cool off after a while. He doesn't turn the tap back on. 

 

Bucky finally comes back. Steve hears him come in and head over to the tiny kitchenette in the corner of the room. He looks back at the shower tile. 

"Hey," Bucky says, reappearing in the doorway. "That water getting cold yet?" 

Steve shrugs. Bucky makes his way over and crouches down next to the bathtub again. 

"I got food," he says. "You gonna eat it if I put it in front of you?" 

"Sure," Steve says. He doesn't care. 

Bucky sighs and gets up. He grabs one of the threadbare towels from the rack and holds it out to Steve. 

Steve gets up, all on his own. He's kind of proud. 

He dries himself off and pulls on the clothes Bucky left for him. The clothing is soft and comfortable, but Steve still winces as it brushes against his still-thawing skin. 

He shuffles out into the room. He sits down heavily on the bed, watching Bucky sort through bags of food. 

"What do you want?" Bucky asks. "I got a few different things. We've got burgers - " 

"That's fine," Steve says. Bucky stares at him for a long moment and then hands him a burger. 

Steve eats. He stares at the blank tv screen as he does so. 

He's still shivering. He slides back on the bed and lies down again. 

"Steve. Steve, no, come on." 

Steve already has his eyes closed, but he opens them again when Bucky hauls him upright. 

"We," Bucky says firmly, "are going to  _talk_." 

Steve stares at him. "About what?" 

Bucky sits down on the other double bed and crosses his arms. "About you walking out into the goddamn Canadian wilderness during a blizzard." 

Steve shrugs lethargically. He's kind of hungry still. "Do we have any more food?" 

"Don't change the subject," Bucky says, but he gets up anyway and grabs Steve another carton of food. 

"Pancakes?" Steve asks, opening the container and taking the fork Bucky offers him. "Why pancakes?" 

"Because they're delicious," Bucky says, "and because you need the calories." 

Steve starts eating. His hands are stiff and achy, and it takes him a few moments to get a handle on the fork. 

"Okay," Bucky says. He sits back down on the bed. "Now we're gonna talk." 

Steve takes another bite of his pancake. 

"Why the fuck were you thinking?" Bucky nearly shouts. He must’ve been holding that in for a while, because there's a lot of anger in his voice. 

Steve flinches and almost drops his pancakes.

"No, fuck," Bucky mutters, and rubs his hands over his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't, I didn't want to yell. But what you were thinking?" 

Steve shrugs. 

"Stop shrugging," Bucky says. 

"Okay. Sorry." 

"Steve - " Bucky runs his hands through his hair. He looks exhausted. "You came up here by yourself, you didn't tell anyone where you were going - " 

"I told Sharon," Steve offers. He dips his pancake into the syrup in the side of the container. 

"No, you called her and asked her for help, and then when she gave it to you, you hung up!" 

Steve almost shrugs again. Bucky narrows his eyes. 

"I'm gonna assume you didn't have a plan when you walked in there," Bucky says, "but tell me if I'm wrong." 

He's not. Steve finishes the pancakes. 

"So you walked straight into what was, for all you knew, an active Hydra centre," Bucky continues, "with no backup, no weapons, and no plan. And then you just... walked back out into one of the worst storms to hit this region in a century." 

Steve sets the container down on the bedside table. 

"Steve!" Bucky shouts. "Jesus fucking christ - " 

"What?" Steve says. "What do you want me to say?" 

"Why the hell would you do that?" Bucky shouts. He's leaning forward, his hands clenched into fists. He's furious. "You almost died, you  _would_  have died if we hadn't found you!"

Steve shrugs, and Bucky nearly hits the ceiling. He storms out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. 

Steve sits on the bed and waits. 

Sure enough, Bucky stomps back in a few minutes later. He marches back over to stand in front of Steve, glaring. 

"You trying to piss me off?" Bucky snarls. "Is that what you're doing? You still mad at me?" 

"I was never angry with you," Steve says. 

"Bullshit." 

Steve shrugs. He doesn't have the energy to argue. 

"Stop fucking shrugging!" Bucky shouts. "Stop acting like this doesn't matter!" 

Steve gets up and starts looking around the room. 

"What are you doing?" Bucky snaps. 

"Where's my phone?" Steve asks. "It was in my pocket." 

"Yeah, it's fucked," Bucky said. "I tried it, it wouldn't even turn on." 

Steve sighs. "Can I use yours?" 

"What for?" 

"I have to call her," Steve says, and holds his hand out. "Bucky, please." 

"Call who?"

"The mother," Steve says, and  _now_  he's getting frustrated. "The whole damn reason I came up here." 

Bucky closes his hand around his cell phone. "Which mother?" 

Steve grinds his teeth together and takes a deep breath in. "Amber Legler. Her daughter, the one... she..." 

Bucky waits. When Steve doesn't say anything else, he starts tucking his phone back into his pocket. 

"Bucky," Steve says through gritted teeth. "Please give me your phone. I need it." 

"To do what?" Bucky asks. "Nat and I already talked to Sharon. She's sending the usual cleanup crew. They'll handle all of that, Steve." 

"No, I promised her," Steve says sharply. "I should be the one to tell her." 

Bucky stares at him. "Why? Why does it have to be you? She's not gonna care once they tell her that her kid's dead." 

"Because I promised her - " 

"Fine, I'll do it," Bucky says, rolling his eyes. He holds his phone out of Steve's reach and turns on the screen. "What was her name? Amber something?" 

"Bucky, just give me your damn phone." 

"No." 

Steve stares at him for a long moment, and then gives up. He's so tired. 

"Fine," he says. "Call her if you want. I don't care." 

Steve sits down on the bed and puts his head in his hands. He's still shivering. 

He doesn't even have to look up to know Bucky's hesitating. 

"Steve." 

Steve presses his hands into his eyes. Colours flash and dance in his vision. 

"Steve. Look at me." 

Steve reluctantly pulls his hands away from his face. Bucky's looking down at him, frowning. 

"I'll call her," Bucky says. "I'll do it right."

Steve nods and stares back down at the floor. 

Bucky holds out his phone and Steve takes it. He types the phone number in and hands it back.

He stares at the floor. Bucky leaves the room and heads out into the hallway.

Steve slumps down onto the bed and looks at the ceiling. There's a large water stain right above him, gritty and old.

He stares at it. The skin on his hands and his face is still knitting back together, and it's itchy now. He knows better than to scratch it, but it's irritating.

 

He hears the door open again.

Bucky moves around the room for a few minutes. It sounds like he's still texting someone.

"You tired?" he says eventually.

"Yeah," Steve says. He is.

"Look, we'll talk about it tomorrow, okay? When you're feeling better."

He won't be, but Steve doesn't bother saying that. He rolls over onto his side, away from Bucky. He closes his eyes. 

He's already almost asleep, but Bucky sighs audibly and starts tugging the blankets out from under him.

"Mmph," Steve mumbles.

"You're still shivering," Bucky says, and hauls the heavy comforter over him.

He falls asleep after that, but he drifts in and out. Bucky turns the lights off at some point, and Steve hears him get into the other bed. 

It hurts. He doesn't say anything, but he'd just... assumed that they'd share. That maybe he'd finally sleep through the night for the first time since Bucky left.  

He wakes up sometime later, the pain still flashing over his body pulling him back to consciousness. He rolls over onto his back and cracks his eyes open. 

Bucky's just sitting on the other bed, watching him. He's frowning. 

"Wha's wrong," Steve mumbles, trying to wake up a little. 

"Nothing, it's fine," Bucky says. "Go back to sleep." 

Steve tries to frown at him, but he's already slipping back under. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm too tired to say anything other than I love you guys

He's standing back in that room, the room with the failed experiments. The girl is lying on the table, her eyes open and staring at the ceiling. 

The only difference is that now her mother is there. She's screaming, trying to pull her daughter up, but the girl's arms are still strapped to the table. 

Steve steps forward, and Amber turns around. 

"Why didn't you help her?" she shouts. "You could’ve stopped this, you could’ve saved her!" 

"I know," Steve says. "I'm sorry." 

Amber glares at him and shakes her head, one arm still clutching her daughter to her chest. "No, you aren't! You're a coward, you're a selfish coward - " 

Something shakes him and then he's back in the hotel room, the nightmare evaporating around him. 

Bucky's sitting beside him on the bed, his hands on Steve's shoulders. He's talking, but Steve can't hear him over the sound of his own harsh breathing. 

Steve gives up and lurches forward, burying his face in Bucky's shoulder. Bucky closes his arms around him, and Steve feels like he can breathe for the first time in months. 

They must fall asleep like that, because when Steve opens his eyes again, it's morning. He's back under the blankets, and Bucky's curled around him. Their feet are tangled together. 

Steve vaguely thinks about getting up, but this feels so good. He never wants to move again. 

He stays like that for another hour, until he feels Bucky’s breathing change. Bucky starts to move around, and Steve keeps his breathing even and steady. Maybe Bucky won’t notice he’s awake. 

He probably notices anyway, but he doesn’t say anything as he gently untangles himself from Steve and gets up. Steve hears him shuffle around the room for a few minutes before heading out the door. 

Steve slowly sits up, blinking in the morning light coming through the window. He feels a lot better now. His skin still feels sensitive and raw, and his muscles are sore from clenching them so tightly, but he’s not in nearly as much pain as he was the night before. 

Bucky comes back just as Steve is struggling to get his shirt on over his head. His hands are still a little too stiff. 

“Morning,” Bucky says. He drops another bag of food down on the table. “I brought breakfast.” 

“Thanks,” Steve says. He grabs one of the cartons (pancakes again) and digs in. 

They sit at the table and eat in silence for a few minutes. 

“I’m coming back with you,” Bucky says abruptly. “I already got us a flight.” 

Steve stares at him. “Why?” 

Bucky scowls. “Because then I can at least be sure that you’re not going to do something stupid on your way home.” 

Steve looks down at his pancakes. “You don’t have to.” 

“Well, I’m doing it anyway,” Bucky says, and gets up. He starts throwing out the trash and shoving his meager things into his backpack. 

“Where’s Nat?” Steve asks, finishing his pancakes. 

“She’s busy,” Bucky says, and leaves it at that.

All Steve has are the clothes that Bucky bought for him, so there’s no packing to do. He calls the rental car company on the way to the airport and tells them that there’s very little chance of them getting the car back, but that he’ll send them the money for it as soon as he can. They aren’t happy about it, but he hangs up before they can start yelling. 

“You’ve got a passport, right?” Bucky asks. He’s driving. 

“Yeah, of course,” Steve says. 

“You didn’t bring your real one, though.”

“Uh,” Steve says. 

Bucky groans. “Okay, first pocket on my backpack, there’s a few in there for you. Just grab one of them.” 

Steve hauls the backpack from the backseat and finds the pocket in question. He flips through a few of the fake passports before settling on one. 

“Why are you carrying passports for me?” Steve asks. 

Bucky shrugs. “In case of situations exactly like this one.” 

It’s oddly touching. Bucky’s been thinking of him, at least. Maybe thinking that Steve would join up with him and Natasha again. 

Bucky disappears when they get to the airport, leaving Steve to go through security on his own. Steve makes it through and ends up squished in his coach seat. He doesn’t fit at all. 

Bucky drops down into the seat next to him, shoving his backpack under the seat in front of him. 

“So you’re really doing this, huh,” Steve says. He puts the armrest up between them, giving both of them more space. If he uses that space to lean into Bucky’ side a little, well, who could blame him. 

“Mhm,” Bucky says. He’s still as a statue in the seat, his hands on his knees and his back straight. Steve knows from experience that he’ll sit like this the whole flight, aware and awake and probably really uncomfortable. 

Steve pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over his aching hands and slumps into Bucky’s side, closing his eyes again. Healing takes a lot out of him, and he’s still tired. 

The flight isn’t too long, and Steve ends up sleeping through the whole thing. Bucky somehow gets off the plane without heading into the rest of the airport, so Steve trudges his way through customs alone. 

Bucky pulls up in another car just as Steve walks outside. 

“Where’d you get this one from?” Steve asks as he slides inside. 

Bucky pulls away from the curb. “I bought it last time I was here.” 

“You’ve just been storing it here?” 

“Yeah.” 

They fall into silence again. It’s a little awkward, and Steve hates it. He doesn’t know what to say, though. ‘So, how’s the murder trip going? Kill anyone special lately?’ It doesn’t exactly make for casual banter. It’s also not like Steve has anything to say, either. He’s got nothing to report, no new news to share. 

They haven’t really talked since the fight, since Bucky left. They text occasionally, making sure the other one is still alive, but not a real conversation. 

Well, Bucky called him once. Steve was having dinner in his apartment, alone, making his way through the stack of library books piled up on his coffee table. 

His phone rang, and Steve scrambled to pick it up. 

“Hello?” he said. 

“Steve,” Bucky said, and his voice was light and happy. 

Steve relaxed a little. “Hey, Buck.” 

“How are you?” Bucky asked. He was slurring a little. 

“I’m fine,” Steve said. “Are you drunk?” 

“Mmm,” Bucky said noncommittedly. Steve could hear the sound of people talking and laughing in the background, like Bucky was in a bar or something of the sort. “You still at home?” 

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Nothing new here. How’s Natasha?” 

“She’s good!” Bucky said eagerly. His voice suddenly faded like he’d pulled the phone away from his face. Steve could hear him talking to someone in an unfamiliar language. A door shut, and the sound of people talking faded away.

“I’m back,” Bucky said. “Sorry about that.” 

“It’s okay.” 

They were quiet again. 

“You doing okay?” Bucky asked. 

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve said. “Just worried about you.” 

“Eh, I’m fine,” Bucky said dismissively. “I mean, I got stabbed a few days ago, but – “ 

“Bucky!” 

Bucky laughed. “I’m just kidding. Well, no, I did get stabbed, but I’m totally fine. It’s already healed.” 

“Jesus,” Steve muttered. “You gotta be more careful.” 

“Hypocrite,” Bucky said, but there was no venom in his voice. 

They fell into silence for a few moments. Steve listened to the sound of Bucky breathing. 

“Steve?” Bucky said finally. “I’m… sorry, about what I said. When I left. I didn’t mean all that shit.” 

Steve closed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.” 

Bucky took another slow breath in. “Okay. I’m gonna… I’m gonna go. I’ll call you later, alright?” 

Steve desperately didn’t want Bucky to go, but of course he didn’t say that. 

“Sounds good,” he said, instead. Bucky hung up, and Steve was left alone in silence again. 

Steve pulls his mind back to the present. They’re almost back at their – Steve’s – apartment. 

Bucky parks the car and gets out, hauling his backpack after him. Steve shuffles into the building behind him. 

Bucky lets himself in. He wanders around the apartment as Steve kicks his shoes off, checking it for… whatever he checks it for. 

“You gonna make fun of me for being paranoid?” Bucky asks as he starts to pull apart the dvd player. 

“No,” Steve says. He flops down on the couch. “Hell, you’re probably going to find something.” 

Bucky stares at him for a moment, and then goes back to his task. 

It takes him almost an hour to finish checking all the rooms. When he’s done, he heads into the kitchen and starts making something. 

It’s weird, at this point, to actually smell food cooking in his kitchen. Steve hauls himself off the couch and leans in the doorway to the kitchen, watching Bucky work. 

He does seem calmer now. There’s less tension in his shoulders and face, and less frenzy in his eyes. He still moves with laser precision, but he’s slowed down, some. He used to stalk from room to room like he was about to break into a run. He’d always been ready for a fight. 

“What are you making?” Steve asks. 

“Not sure yet,” Bucky replies, mixing something in a bowl. “Something with a lot of calories and protein. You look too skinny.” 

“I’ve been eating.” 

“Uh huh,” Bucky says. “I checked out what you’ve got here. There’s a bunch of microwave meals and cereal and not much else.” 

“Those have a lot of calories!” 

“Yeah, and no protein,” Bucky counters. “Can you get drinks?” 

Steve opens the fridge. “I’ve only got beer and water.” 

“What kind of beer?” 

Steve holds it up, and Bucky makes a face. “It’ll have to do.” 

Bucky ends up making pasta, with a ton of parmesan cheese and frozen chicken and even some vegetables that he poached from the microwave dinners. 

“It’s not fresh, but it’ll do,” Bucky muttered as he handed Steve his plate. 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says.

They sit across from each other to eat, Bucky focusing on his food with the same intensity he gives everything. The pasta is delicious, but Steve starts off just picking at it like he normally does. Within minutes, though, he goes through one entire plate and starts on his second. 

Bucky laughs as Steve practically inhales his second plate. “You were hungry?” 

“Guess so,” Steve says through a mouthful of pasta. 

“Gross,” Bucky says, and Steve smirks at him. Bucky tosses his napkin at Steve. Steve catches it and uses it to wipe his mouth, ignoring Bucky’s sound of protest. 

They finish eating and Steve does the dishes while Bucky wanders off again. Steve hears the shower start, and he’s happy that Bucky feels at home enough to do that without asking. It is still his home, after all, and always will be. 

Even if he doesn’t want it anymore. 


	4. Chapter 4

Steve starts the dishwasher and leaves the pots in the drying rack. He goes into the bedroom and roots through his dresser, finding clothes that are actually his.

He changes out of the sweats that Bucky bought him and into some of his own, tossing the others in the laundry hamper. He sits down on the bed, fiddling with the edge of the bedspread.

Bucky comes into the room with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Steve hastily looks down at the blankets again as Bucky drops the towel and grabs some of Steve’s clothes to wear.

“How long are you gonna stay?” Steve asks, keeping his eyes averted.

Bucky’s quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you know you can stay as long as you want.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. He’s dressed now, but he’s still systematically going through the dresser drawers. Probably checking them for bugs again.

Steve pulls a book out of the stack on his bedside table and starts reading it, mostly to focus on something that isn’t panic over whether or not he should invite Bucky to sleep in the bed with him or if he needs to do that or if Bucky will just do it anyway –

He falls asleep at some point, and it’s dark when he wakes up again. Bucky’s asleep in bed beside him, and Steve has to fight back the urge to instinctively curl around him.

Bucky only gets up twice to walk around the apartment, checking the locks and whatever security measures he’s already put in place. It’s a huge improvement over how often he used to have to do it.

 

Steve wakes up just as the sun starts to creep through the bedroom curtains. He opens his eyes to find Bucky staring at him.

“Morning,” Bucky says softly.

“Morning,” Steve mumbles. Bucky stares at him for another moment and then rolls out of bed.

Steve hears him moving around in the kitchen, starting breakfast. Steve hops into the shower and gets clean as quickly as he can, not wanting to miss even a few minutes of time with Bucky.

By the time he’s out of the shower and dressed, Bucky’s already made pancakes and waffles. Steve didn’t even know he had the ingredients for those.

“I wanted to make bacon,” Bucky says with a frown, poking at his waffles, “but there isn’t any. I’m gonna go get groceries this morning.”

“Okay,” Steve says, accepting the plate Bucky hands him. “The store on the corner has pretty much everything you need, you don’t have to go to the big one.”

“Yeah, I know, I remember,” Bucky says, a small smile on his face.

They finish eating, and Bucky heads back into the bedroom to get changed. Steve follows him, for lack of anything better to do, and winces when he sees Bucky pull his shirt over his head.

He’s got new scars, even since the last time Steve saw him. There’s a big one running down over his ribs that’s barely healed, and another over his hip that looks like a nasty puncture wound.

Bucky sees the look on Steve’s face.

“It’s nothing,” he says quickly. “It’s fine.”

“I should be out there with you,” Steve says morosely.

“It’s fine, Steve,” Bucky says. He pulls his jacket on and zips it up. “I’m gonna go get some food, I’ll be back in a while.”

Steve nods and sits down miserably on the bed. Bucky casts him an unreadable look, but leaves anyway.

 

Steve’s still sitting there by the time Bucky gets back. It’s been… hours, at least. He hears the apartment door open and then the sound of Bucky putting the groceries away.

Bucky eventually comes back into the bedroom, scowling.

“Is this all you do while I’m gone?” he asks. “Sit there looking sad? That all you’ve been doing?”

Steve opens his mouth to deny it, but all he ends up saying is “I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s look of frustration gives way into anger.

“I thought this is what you wanted!” he nearly shouts, spreading his arms out. “You wanted to stay here, you wanted me gone – “

“No, I didn’t!” Steve shouts back. He’s angry too, now. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from. “I never wanted that!”

“Bullshit,” Bucky snaps. “I asked you to come, you said no, but you didn’t want me to stay here either – “

“Of course I wanted you to stay!” Steve shouts. “Of course I did!”

“You never said that, though!”

“I didn’t want you to feel like you had to! I wanted you to have a choice!”

Bucky glares at him. “Yeah, some choice. I know you didn’t want me here, of course I was gonna leave.”

“I did want you here, Buck,” Steve says. His throat hurts. “That’s all I wanted.”

“No, you wanted the old me,” Bucky shouts. There’s so much anger in his voice, but his face just looks hurt. “You wanted your old friend here, not me. You wanted the guy who liked dancing and music and worked four fucking jobs to pay the rent, not the thing that I am now.”

“Bucky – “

“You know what?” Bucky shouts. “Don’t even call me that. Don’t fucking call me that name. I can see it in your face, you fucking hate having to use that name in reference to me. You loved Bucky, and I’m not him. I’m never going to fucking _be_ him.”

“No, you know what?” Steve shouts back. “Fuck you. I’ve never said that, that’s not true. Stop fucking assuming things, twisting my words. All I wanted was for you to stay, and I let you go because I didn’t want to make you feel like you _had_ to stay. You were miserable here, Buck! You only stayed as long as you did because you felt bad about leaving poor useless me at home – “

“Oh, now who’s assuming things? I stayed here because I love you, Steve, because I didn’t want to be without you again! You think I need to be out there with Natasha, killing people and blowing shit up? She can do it on her own, she doesn’t need me! I left because I couldn’t take another fucking second of you looking at me like that, like I’m some, some sick imitation of the person you used to know! You fucking flinch when I touch you with my left arm, Steve, you know how that feels?”

Bucky’s face is red and his chest is heaving. He’s still shouting.

“I’m sorry that I can’t sit there and reminisce about the good old days with you,” Bucky snarls. “I’m real fuckin’ sorry. I don’t fucking remember enough to do that, and even when I do it’s all mixed in with the bad shit. I don’t want to think about the past, there’s nothing there for me anymore. All I can do is move forward, and if you don’t want to come with me, then that’s it.”

It terrifies Steve. It scares him so badly he can barely breathe.

“Bucky, don’t, I don’t – “ he starts, but he’s stammering and his throat feels so tight that he can’t get the words out.

Bucky clearly takes it as Steve not knowing what to say, and he scowls and storms back out into the living room. Steve can hear him putting his shoes on, and the cold fear running through his veins finally kicks him into action.

He stumbles out of the bedroom and puts himself between Bucky and the door. It’s a mistake, because he knows Bucky hates that, hates having his exits blocked, and now Bucky probably thinks that Steve’s just a careless idiot who forgets things like that, but he’s really just so desperate to keep Bucky from leaving –

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, stumbling over his words in his haste to get them out. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like that and I’m sorry that you still think all that is true but it’s not, Buck, it’s not true at all. I never wanted you to leave, ever, I never want you to leave. Or if you do want to leave, I’ll come with you.”

Bucky’s eyes are still narrowed, but he’s clearly gonna hear Steve out. Steve keeps talking, stringing all his words together.

“I don’t want the old you,” he says desperately. “That’s never going to happen, and besides, the old you would never have wanted me around, either. I want you now, the way you are now.”

Bucky scoffs. “Why the fuck would you want that?”

“Because I love you, Buck! Not some old version of you.”

Steve wants to explain, wants to tell Bucky each specific reason why. He wants to tell him that he’s the bravest person Steve’s ever met. He’s smart and loyal and funny and even though the worst things that can happen to someone did happen to him, repeatedly, over the course of seven decades, he still smiles and laughs and tells bad guys to go fuck themselves.

He’s the kind of person who’ll go back in to a burning building until he knows everybody’s out. He even went back in to get a barking dog to safety.

When they found an entire family who’d been locked in a Hydra outpost for years, Bucky sat with them and translated for them for hours, until a proper interpreter arrived. Then he sat with the kids and played board games with them, even though he hadn’t slept for four days and hadn’t eaten for probably longer.

When Natasha broke her leg in four places because Steve was too slow to stop her from falling down an elevator shaft, Bucky climbed down after her and then somehow managed to get both of them all the way back up, even though he’d been shot three times himself.

He’s the most feared (and admired) assassin in the world, and yet he’s still the kind of person who’ll make smiley faces on the pancakes he makes for Steve out of chocolate chips.

But he can’t articulate that all, not when he’s like this. Not when Bucky’s seconds away from leaving again.

“If I flinch when you touch me with your arm it’s not because of you,” he says instead. “It makes me sick to think about what they did to you, and it’s just a reminder – “

“It’s part of me,” Bucky says, his arms folded.

“I know,” Steve says desperately. “I know, and it’s my problem that I can’t get over it, not yours. Fuck, I’m making it your problem though – “

Steve abruptly feels like he’s going to pass out, which is ridiculous because he hasn’t passed out since he got the serum. Well, actually no, he’s passed out quite a few times from blood loss and head injuries and that time that he crushed both arms getting hit by that truck… but still, this is ridiculous. He needs to calm down, but he can’t get it together, can’t slow his breathing down.

“Steve, calm down,” Bucky orders.

Steve sits down, hard, on one of the kitchen chairs. He puts his head in his hands and rests his elbows on his knees, still trying to get the words out.

“I don’t know what to do,” he mumbles through his hands. “I don’t know what to do, Buck. You won’t be happy here, stuck here with me, but I can’t go with you and Nat, I can’t, I can’t do that anymore – “

“Take a breath,” Bucky says firmly. He crouches down in front of Steve, tugging his hands away from his face. Steve can’t meet his eyes. “You gotta calm down.”

“I’m calm, it’s fine,” Steve mutters, even though he isn’t and it’s not.

“Hey, we don’t have to decide everything right now, okay?” Bucky says. He’s still got Steve’s hands clutched in his. “It’s okay.”

Steve makes himself take a long, shuddering breath in. God, he can’t believe this. This isn’t the kind of person he’d ever thought he’d be. He never wanted to be this person, this useless waste of space.

“You still look like shit,” Bucky says quietly. “You should get some more sleep.”

“You should too,” Steve mumbles, but he lets Bucky pull him up and haul him back into the bedroom. He doesn’t bother to get changed, just crashes onto the bed and crawls under the blankets.

Bucky sits next to him with his back against the headboard, doing something on his phone. Steve falls asleep in a matter of minutes, despite how wired he still feels.

Bucky finally gets into bed a few hours later, and Steve wakes up a little, then. He falls back to sleep when Bucky stretches his arm across Steve’s back, but then he’s up again when Bucky is less than an hour later.

Bucky gets up multiple times during the night. Steve hears him walking around the apartment, hears him in the kitchen and then in the shower. Bucky doesn’t sleep well here, he never has. He doesn’t feel safe, and Steve knows that. Bucky doesn’t feel safe anywhere, but it’s something about this particular apartment that makes it worse.

Maybe it’s because this is where they lived when Bucky was in the worst of it, when all he did was pace back and forth until he exhausted himself enough to sleep, only to wake up again an hour later and get right back at it. It got worse and worse until Steve had called Natasha, and she’d shown up and taken him away and then a few months later they came back and took Steve with him.

He’d done it for a year and a half, the destruction and the killing and the bringing people to justice. It was bad people that they were doing it to, Steve knew that. They saved innocent people and they killed the bad ones and Bucky had a purpose and he was doing what he was good at it and he was alive again, both him and Nat. They were doing what they wanted to do, what helped them sleep at night.

And Steve, well. Steve killed people and sorted through the dead bodies to find the live ones. He held people and let them cry on his shoulder as he carried them out of the rubble. He slit throats and cracked skulls open and blew things up, and then at night he’d get to be with Bucky.

Bucky got better, and Steve got worse.

He stopped sleeping, stopped eating. He did what Bucky and Natasha needed him to do, he killed people and he watched their backs and he cleaned the blood off their hands, and then he went back to wherever they were staying and sat down and stared at the wall until they had to go again.

It just kept getting worse, and he couldn’t take it and then it all blew up between Steve and Bucky. Steve went home and Bucky stayed and they didn’t speak to each other for three horrible months, until Steve caved and texted him and Bucky texted back a few seconds later.

Steve didn’t know what to do then, and he doesn’t know what to do now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo apparently this fic isn't showing up in the tags for some people? does anybody know why that's happening/how to fix it? thank you!!

Bucky’s up again when Steve wakes up. Steve hears him out in the kitchen, so he gets up and stumbles out there.

“Morning,” Bucky says. He’s got eggs cooking on the stove. “Grab a plate.”

Steve gets them out of the cupboard and hands two of them to Bucky, who spoons breakfast onto them and hands one to Steve.

Steve sits down at the counter and starts eating. Bucky hands him a cup of coffee and then starts in on his own breakfast, leaning against the counter as he eats.

“I’m sorry I yelled, yesterday,” Bucky says finally, keeping his eyes on his plate. “I didn’t want to.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s… I didn’t know that’s what you were thinking.”

“I didn’t really either,” Bucky mutters.

They finish breakfast. Bucky goes to shower, and Steve does the dishes. When he finishes that, he scrubs down the counters and the stove. When that’s done, he ends up sweeping the floor.

He’s pulling out the vacuum to get started on the living room when Bucky wanders out again.

“What do you want to do today?” he asks. “What the fuck, are you vacuuming?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve says. “The floor’s dirty.”

“No, it’s not,” Bucky says. “It’s fine. Come on, what do you normally do when I’m not here?”

The answer is nothing. Steve doesn’t do anything, not unless Sam comes over and drags him out for lunch or something.

“We could…” Steve says slowly, desperately casting around for something more exciting. “There’s a little gallery that opened up down the road, we could check that out?”

“Sure,” Bucky says with a shrug, and takes the vacuum away from Steve.

They go to the gallery. Steve likes it, and Bucky says he does too, but Steve has excellent peripheral vision and he knows that Bucky spent way more time looking at Steve than he did at the art. He’s not sure what to make of that.

They get lunch, and then go back to the apartment. Steve sits on the couch and turns on the television. Bucky sits next to him for all of ten minutes before he’s up again, pacing and looking out the windows and rifling through the kitchen cupboards.

Steve eventually shuts the television off and just watches him move around. Bucky finally picks up on it, and comes to stand in front of him.

“What are we gonna do?” Steve asks softly.

Bucky stares at him for a long moment, and then sits down heavily on the couch next to him.

“I see two options,” he says finally. He’s not looking at Steve, he’s just staring at the wall as he talks. “Hear me out?”

“Of course,” Steve says, and Bucky nods.

“First option,” Bucky starts. “You don’t come with us. You stay here.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but his heart rate starts to speed up –

“I told you to hear me out!” Bucky says indignantly. “You’re panicking!”

“I’m not!” Steve says. He is.

“Let me finish,” Bucky orders. “Okay. First option, you don’t come with us, you stay home. I mean, I’d prefer not this apartment because I kind of hate it, but whatever you want to do – “

“No, I can move,” Steve says hurriedly. “I don’t care where. I don’t care about this place at all.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, relaxing slightly. “Well, wherever. I go with Nat, but then when we’re not working, I come home. To you.”

“For how long, though?” Steve asks. “A few days at a time?”

“A few weeks, maybe. If I can.”

Steve frowns. “I’ll be what, your housewife? Sitting at home waiting for you to come back?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “No, of course not. You’d… do whatever it is you do now. Paint or something. Draw.”

Steve tries to think of the last time he did any form of art, even sketching. “I don’t really do that anymore.”

Bucky rubs a hand over his face. “Well, I don’t know, Steve! I can’t tell you what to do!”

He’s getting mad again. Steve nudges Bucky’s leg with his foot, waiting for him to take some deep breaths.

Bucky does, and he rubs at his face again before he looks up. “Okay. We figure out something for you to do, you find a new place to live, I come and stay with you as often as I can.”

“Alright,” Steve says slowly. He… doesn’t like that option. At all. “What’s the other choice?”

“I know you don’t want to fight,” Bucky says. “I get it, I do. But I… I don’t want to go for weeks without seeing you. So I was thinking… maybe you could come with us, with me and Nat. But not to fight. You could travel with us but stay behind while we go out. Get a safe house up, get food.”

“Help you wash the blood off when you come back?” Steve says. He says it like he’s kidding, but they both know he’s not.

“I guess,” Bucky says. “I mean, I just thought… I don’t have all the logistics or anything, but this way… this way we wouldn’t have to be apart.”

“I’d still be worried about you.”

“Yeah, but I’ll only be an hour away, at most,” Bucky says. “We can have dinner together and stuff like that.”

Steve leans his head back against the couch and thinks about it.

“Or neither,” Bucky says a moment later. “That’s okay too.”

“You can’t stay here,” Steve says. “So this is it.”

“Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

Steve doesn’t. He knows he doesn’t want to kill anymore, and he doesn’t want to be without Bucky.

“I’ll go with you,” he says, and Bucky’s eyes light up a little.

“Really?” Bucky asks. “You’d do that?”

Steve nods, and gets up to start dinner.

They spend the night in the apartment, in the same bed again. They don’t fuck, even though Steve wants to and he’s pretty sure Bucky does too. They’re in a weird place, like they’re stuck between something that was and something that’s going to be.

They leave the next morning.

Steve doesn’t has much to pack. He shoves his tablet and some clothes into a bag, and grabs the sketchbook that Bucky bought him for Christmas. That’s it, really.

Bucky looks better the moment he shuts the apartment door behind him and follows Steve down the hallway. He’s brighter, like he has a purpose again. Which, Steve guesses, he does.

They take Bucky’s car. Bucky drives, and Steve stretches out in the passenger seat and watches the countryside flash by. The car’s quiet and fast. It’s not as fun as Steve’s motorcycle, but he laughs at the grin on Bucky’s face as he revs the engine when they hit open stretches of highway.

They meet up with Natasha in the south, and she’s happy to see them. She has a new scar on her collarbone that wasn’t there the last time Steve saw her, but her eyes are bright and she sprawls out easily in the backseat of the car when she climbs in.

 

They go to Texas, first. Steve’s initially hesitant. He’s not even sure he wants to know what their plan is, who they’re going after or what they’re going to do.

But they get a booth in a quiet diner and start planning.

“Do you wanna know?” Bucky asks, arm over the back of the booth and the other resting on the table.

“Only the parts about you two,” Steve says finally, and Natasha nods.

Steve eats his dinner, and Bucky and Natasha switch to another language and talk. They go back to English when they’re discussing things that’ll involve Steve, like where he should pick them up if anything goes wrong.

Steve’s worried, but he always is. It’s nothing new.

From there, they drive another hour to the rundown town that they’re aiming for. Bucky pulls the car into a Walmart parking lot, and they all get out.

Steve hugs Natasha, and she lets him. He doesn’t hug Bucky, because it feels too much like goodbye, and he can’t handle that right now.

Steve gets into the car and starts it. Natasha and Bucky start walking, somehow disappearing almost immediately in the rows of generic parked cars.

Steve leans on the steering wheel and watches them until they’re gone. He makes himself take a deep breath and then pulls out of the parking lot, not looking back.

They’re going to steal a car, and then they’re going to go kill bad guys. Steve’s going to go find a place for them to stay the night.

He gets a room in a generic hotel chain. It’s not ideal, he’d prefer somewhere a little more isolated, but it’s a small town. It’s the type of place where everyone knows their neighbours, and will notice strangers moving in and out of a house on the street.

 He texts Natasha and Bucky the room number in the code that they prefer. He doesn’t bother putting the hotel name in. They have trackers on their phones that are linked to his, they’ll just follow that.

Steve drops his stuff in the room and then goes to find food. He buys things that’ll be fine in the fridge for a while, and are microwavable.

He leaves that in the room, too, and gets changed. He heads back out onto the streets, just walking with no purpose. He has his phone on him, they’ll call or text if they need him.

Steve likes it, he finds. Just walking. He finds it interesting, walking through neighbourhoods where people have lived their entire lives, or are in the process of doing so. He walks by schools and run-down medical clinics and yards with chain-link fences. Couples scream at each other, not caring about their open windows. Children chase each other through the streets, pointing sticks at each other like they’re guns. A dog barks at him, and Steve keeps walking.

No one bothers him. Natasha’s taught him how to walk so that he’s less conspicuous, so that people’s eyes slide over him and focus on something else. He’s not nearly as good as it as Bucky is, and he’s never going to be, but it is what it is.

It’s a warm night, and Steve keeps walking. He eventually loops around so that he’s back to the hotel, where he pulls out his sketchbook. He opens it for the first time in months and sits down at the outdated wood table in the corner of the room.

He’s still drawing when he hears familiar footsteps coming down the hallway towards the room. Natasha changes her gait every so often, so she’s harder to recognize, but Bucky’s footsteps are always distinctive. The weight of his arm makes him heavier on his left side, and it’s reflected in how his footsteps sound.

Steve gets up and opens the door, feeling his heartbeat speed up even though he knows they’re probably fine.

They’re okay. Natasha has a scrape along the side of her face and some weird substance in her hair, but other than that, she looks fine. Bucky looks fine, dirty but in one piece.

Steve steps back and lets them into the room.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

“Good,” Natasha says.

“Piece of cake,” Bucky says, and sits down on the bed to take his boots off. “Speaking of which – “

Steve starts getting the food ready for them. Natasha disappears into the washroom and the shower turns on. Bucky and Steve sit on the bed and eat. Steve tries not to stare too hard at Bucky, but it must not work because Bucky rolls his eyes and says “I’m fine, Steve,” through a mouthful of bagel.

Natasha reappears from the washroom clean and dressed, the scratch on her face invisible under what Steve assumes is careful makeup. She eats a few bites of food and then pats them both on the head. She puts her shoes on and leaves, which is normal. Steve doesn’t know where she goes, after, but he doesn’t ask.

Bucky’s starting to look tired, so Steve cleans up dinner and turns the television on. Bucky sprawls out on the bed, his eyes half-open as he watches people race their cars through the desert.

Steve sits next to him and draws him, in the shitty motel room light and with the sound of cars driving by outside. Bucky looks over at him, and there’s something in his face that Steve hasn’t seen for a long time. Calm, maybe.

Bucky reaches over and taps the edge of Steve’s sketchbook with his finger.

“This is good,” is all he says, and then he lies down again and closes his eyes.

Steve ends up falling asleep on top of the blankets next to him.

When he wakes up again, it’s dark in the room and outside, still. Natasha still hasn’t come back, and Bucky’s still breathing softly next to him.

The sun is just starting to lighten up the sky outside, and Bucky shifts beside him. He reaches up and tugs at Steve’s shirt, until Steve lies down again.

Bucky rolls over and climbs on top of him, leaning down to kiss him. Steve’s mind goes blissfully blank for the first time in months, and even though Bucky’s weight is on top of him he feels like he can breathe for the first time in too long.

They fuck like they’ve got all the time in the world, which they don’t, and they both know it. They pretend, and it works, for the time being.

Natasha comes back just before noon, looking just as put together as she did when she left.

They get back into the car and keep going.

 

They go down to Mexico, then all the way up north again. From there they get on a plane and go to Venezuela. Oslo, Kyoto, and then small towns in Siberia that Steve can’t pronounce.

Sometimes they stay for weeks at a time, and Steve has a chance to really explore. He finds the good bars that only locals go to, figures out where to get the best takeout. He sits on riverbanks and draws. Sometimes Bucky comes with him, if it’s not busy. Steve doesn’t get much drawing done when Bucky’s there, because sitting peacefully on a riverbank usually leads to Bucky either falling asleep, or the two of them getting into a vicious tickle fight that ends with both of them in the river, soaking wet.

Other times, they’re only in a place for a day or so. That has its charms, too.

Steve gets tired, though. He thinks wistfully about just… stopping, for a while. Finding a cabin somewhere, maybe. Just them. Reading books, playing cards. Just being together.

But he knows why that can’t happen, he understands. He gets it. He could do it on his own, but that’s the opposite of anything he wants. The thought of being away from Bucky again makes his heart race and his chest get tight. It’s probably not a healthy phenomenon, and Sam would probably have something sharp to say about it, but well. It is what it is.

**Author's Note:**

> [me, on tumblr](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)


End file.
